nk--what mightn't be made of these people, if they'd only Submit?

Perkins looked behind them, at the solemn young footmen passing
and repassing, noiselessly, in blue and white liveries. _They_ had
Submitted. And it was just because they had been able to that they
were no good.

"Damn!" said Perkins, under his breath.

Sec.3.

One of the big conifers from the park had been erected in the hall,
and this, after dinner, was found to be all lighted up with electric
bulbs and hung with packages in tissue paper.

The Duchess stood, a bright, feral figure, distributing these packages
to the guests. Perkins' name was called out in due course and the
package addressed to him was slipped into his hand. He retired
with it into a corner. Inside the tissue-paper was a small morocco
leather case. Inside that was a set of diamond and sapphire
sleeve-links--large ones.

He stood looking at them, blinking a little.

He supposed he must put them on. But something in him,
some intractably tough bit of his old self, rose up
protesting--frantically.

If he couldn't Use these people, at least they weren't going to Use
_him_!

"No, damn it!" he said under his breath, and, thrusting the case into
his pocket, slipped away unobserved.

Sec.4.

He flung himself into a chair in his bedroom and puffed a blast of air
from his lungs.... Yes, it had been a narrow escape. He knew that if
he had put those beastly blue and white things on he would have been a
lost soul....

"You've got to pull yourself together, d'you hear?" he said to
himself. "You've got to do a lot of clear, steady, merciless
thinking--now, to-night. You've got to persuade yourself somehow that,
Foundlings or no Foundlings, this regeneration of mankind business may
still be set going--and by _you_."

He paced up and down the room, fuming. How recapture the generous
certitudes that had one by one been slipping away from him? He found
himself staring vacantly at the row of books on the little shelf by
his bed. One of them seemed suddenly to detach itself--he could almost
have sworn afterwards that he didn't reach out for it, but that it
hopped down into his hand....

"Sitting Up For The Dawn"! It was one of that sociological series by
which H.G. W*lls had first touched his soul to finer issues when he
was at the 'Varsity.

He opened it with tremulous fingers. Could it re-exert its old sway
over him now?

The page he had opened it at was headed "General Cessat